market. can. find out what's really happening to the global economy with mike's culture there are no holds barred look at the global financial headlines kaiser report. with the new around the globe with spectacular celebrations from australia to america we show you the highlights. are two also looks at the legacy of the twenty twelve that could have been if things had turned out differently and explore some of the challenges the world might face in the coming months. and deal looks set to pull america from the edge of the fiscal cliff tax hikes for millions of americans for the time being at least.

around the world and around the clock this is very happy new year. twenty thirteen has made it around the globe with an array of fireworks performances and cheering crowds let's take a look at how the world has been partying new zealand was among the first in twenty thirty crowds in the harbor in oakland to enjoy the fireworks exploding over the city's. australia join the festivities shortly with almost two million people gathering to see an outstanding jaw dropping fireworks from harbor bridge as the clock struck midnight and continued its triumphant march through asia with one of the most spectacular show is on building in hong kong where count down to twenty thirteen culminated in a light extravaganza on the land and in the sky europe picked up a holiday torch in hosting one of the world's largest open air parties at the brandenburg gate one of the u.k. pulled out. all the stops the great fireworks display in the heart of the capital

at the london eye and across the atlantic over a million spectators descended on new york's times square to celebrate and with the traditional drop of the crystal ball. and the hair in russia new year officially kicked off for the traditional child of the country's main clock on one of the kremlin's towers revelers from across russia came to red square to watch the crowning moment of fireworks of the iconic battles cathedral. well they were mixed emotions regarding the year that's past sad to see a ten but of many more hopeful that twenty thirteen will see better times artie's lucic half an offer takes a look at the world that could have been. twenty twelve was certainly full of disappointing headlines hope fueled by the arab spring turned

into the turmoil of the arab autumn the war in syria claimed countless lives and a fiscal crisis all the european union torn apart at its very seams and the problems facing our world today certainly don't offer themselves up to an easy fix what if things had turned out differently what if opportunities were actually the pawn instead of missed well here's our look at the twenty twelve headlines that could have been. diplomacy succeeds in syria ending bloody conflict. instead this was the image of syria the world saw increasingly violent clashes between government forces and the opposition had claimed more than forty thousand lives efforts to negotiate a diplomatic solution fell flat because divisions ripped apart both the country and the international community hundreds of thousands of refugees have fled to neighboring states where many have found conditions to be dismal meanwhile syria's war is threatening to spill over its borders as tensions escalate within and in the

region. of told me to try and sanction slashed. except. by the u.s. rules to restrict foreign. mideast peace to israel league two state park who promised on. yet this was their reality israel's assault on palestinian militants in gaza israel's anti-missile shield repelled the most attacks on its territory but a strike claimed the lives of more than one hundred sixty palestinians many of them civilians despite harsh condemnation from many in the international community the war and israel's subsequent decision to construct three thousand new settlements effectively slammed the door shut to any prospects of peace go through people power moment came. step aside and let democracy. get lost get my notorious kuantan of my prison permanently shot. euro zone cuts the cuts and lifts austerity. but the

news of austerity only tightened as deep public sector cuts brought thousands of angry demonstrators to the streets of greece spain italy and portugal. the worst economic crisis of a generation has battered the european union's very foundations exacerbating tensions between member states with some regions now desperately wanting out i grew up in a europe that was divided from east to west going to europe it is divided from old to south and never at any point in the history of this union has there been more discord of rank that we covered. corporate cash banned from the campaign coffers as part of the us political clique. no heel for u.k. british quit european union. we found a duty on the solyndra point to un free speech and. instead a song remains a political refugee at ecuador's london embassy where he's been granted asylum he

continues to fight extradition to sweden over alleged sex crimes charges that he says are politically motivated and tied to his work in leaking international government secrets. the power of people speaking up and resisting together terrifies corrupt democratic power so much so that only people here in the west and the enemy of governments an enemy to be watched and intimate to be confront and to be impoverished true democracy is not the white house true democracy is not. true democracy is the resistance of people with the truth against flies from top to right here in london. everyday ordinary people teach us that democracy is free speech and just sent. from heretics to hero american whistleblower bradley manning finally free. droning on the nation's

agree to end iraq of remote control. egypt's arab spring sees democracy defeat hardline islamist. the reality on the ground was anything but egyptian president mohamed morsi is foul like power grab unleashed fury and frenzied street battles and a fast track to constitutional overhaul referendum left a bitter opposition eager for change for them two thousand and twelve saw the arab spring transformed into an egyptian nightmare had a revolution to get rid of a tyrant to dictators. in the order to that we made elections the revolution and elections to choose someone to the present us turned out that this guy is also a tyrant but his head lines may have been the stuff of imagination but that's the of twenty thirteen any of them to life with the council r.t.

moscow. or celebrations on capitol hill were delayed as lawmakers use the early hours of twenty thirteen to strike a crucial deal to avert the so-called fiscal cliff the senate eventually agreed to hold the proposed tax hike which would have affected virtually every american worker the deal still has to go before the house of representatives later on tuesday is economics expert max keiser told us that it's still too early to pop the champagne. some people call him the crazy kaiser mr marks joining us good to see you max i mean two thousand to two thousand and thirteen a big happy new year to you there it's a rule we kept and a nice a here you know you never tell you what made you always go for the juggler with all the guests you have on the cars report is there anyone at this point you already are going up with two thousand and thirteen any victims of the future absolutely we're going after jamie diamond i don't think cops are ready for. we're going to find him we're going to jail i'm a lot of the prankster compadres this is the year we see pranksters in jail i sort

of started putting baxter is in jail now the rest of the world's going to stop putting pranksters in jail the fiscal cliff is just more theater from bankers and politicians trying to distract people from the underlying root catastrophe that is a bunch of bankers who are manipulating the system day in and day out destroying the economy this fiscal cliff is just more drama more theater and it doesn't really focus on the true underlying problems and we're going to see more of this going forward in two thousand and thirteen anything good bye flecked attention from the mobs what they're pitchforks and torches are coming after these people they want to just delay that day of reckoning for as many months as they can but that day's reckoning in twenty eight it's coming. well there was one common new year wish among europeans their leaders might ease up on the cuts. all the government's listening well the truth is the government can't afford to

listen. one of our economic contributors says countries are still heading down the wrong path explains why shortly. in a tough twelve months for the world's top whistleblower joining the sun spent half of twenty twelve under house arrest and they remained in the ecuadorian embassy in london correspondent sara firth has been following his ups and downs through the year a lot of you say we did more in a year old media organizations decades we've really had a front of everything that's been going on we had him at the beginning of the year . and we saw his the pill rejected we then saw that dramatic twist in the trial when he went into the i could do it and. we. certainly the british media we see a lot of the colonel who quite viciously especially during the course of this year

with. events happening surrounding. a lot of people would put that down plain and simply to jealousy. now last year was a success for barack obama who secured his second u.s. presidency and washington correspondent says he not only succeeded in snatching victory from arch rival mitt romney but also votes from the third party candidates . there were cheers of relief here when he won i would say because the alternative was thought to be so much worse many voted out of fear that romney could win for them he was another george w. bush so whether americans have fallen out of love with obama the two thousand and eight euphoria was gone that's for sure back then there were these crowds you know in the streets all across the country shedding tears of joy so bad in their view where eight years of bush presidency obama was we get the savior and then he went and saved the banks saved the auto industry something he took a special pride in during the election campaign but across the country people

remained out of work and are still out of work so this time president obama ran under the banner it could have been so much worse as you imagine it was not a banner for the national euphoria it was more like you have no choice but to choose me kind of something that shocked me was i was covering the election here it was it was the second debate between obama and romney i'm sure you remember you remember that it just presidential nominee from the green party jule styne was arrested right outside the venue where the debate was taking place she was protesting for exclusion from that age and nobody like no news channel period mentioned her arrest none and i was switching channels for hours to see if anything was said about that and it was nothing i can imagine what the reaction would be here in the states if a presidential candidate is the mother of the country was arrested in the media there wouldn't even mention it but apparently it happens in the u.s. no big deal president right well there was some irony in that yes anyway during the

election campaign the mainstream media had been focused on nothing else and no one else with these two candidates and we are t.v. as you remember of course saw the in saw an opportunity there to show what others don't and we hosted the debate. well the end of the year so barack obama's victory overshadowed by the primary school shooting in connecticut in there the president to pledge and then the to the epidemic of gun violence auntie's tom hartman takes of the with whether the end of the free is ready to loosen its grip on the right to carry a firearm my guess is what we're going to see is cosmetic change we're going to see probably the or the assault weapons ban come back they'll be a fair number of loopholes in it but you know the u.s. is not going to end up going the way that's what's a longer israel have done or many most european countries have done australia when john howard was president one thousand nine hundred eight when there was a mass slaughter and then they said ok that's it we're going to buy back all the

guns and it's not going to happen here there's just too much money being made with guns insane supreme court or at least five right wing crazies out of the nine on the supreme court decided that even though the second amendment says in order to maintain a well regulated militia necessary for the security of a free state the right to you know you people have the right to own guns that's half of it the other half of it is that the supreme court also said that corporations interest groups lobbying groups billionaires can throw unlimited amounts of money in politicians. well the soul searching among the russian opposition over why deep protest mood in the country lost steam in the past you a few minutes all these people like you are people took part in anti-government rallies in twenty twelve plus he examines who the activists actually are. also be a change of leadership in iran in twenty thirteen but what will that mean for the west that's just ahead.

more news today violence is once again flared up. these are the images cobol has been seeing from the streets of canada. giant corporations are old today. welcome back you're with the team russian politics or a kremlin return for the emir putin and fresh antigovernment protests in twenty twelve although in numbers smaller than the year before arty's political analysts watch developments in the heart of the rallies he told my colleagues kevin owen and at least another way how he sees the protests mood in russia panning out. i would say it's kind of bleak but not hopeless ok we didn't come up with any new ideas new organisation new faces and if pussy riot is that we are of the opposition that's pretty dreadful situation for the russian people and political development in

general here and there's there was political change in this country in a positive change who does make up the opposition as we head into the it's a very interesting question because i have gone to most of the major demonstrations and there were people there of goodwill in my opinion but then there were fascists there ok who were communists there i mean these are people they're ok and it's your right to demonstrate i also for the actually like the idea but they didn't accomplish anything that i could see they have no organization no unifying ideas except for i don't like but a mere putin which is not a very it's not a political agenda there were a few protests which i was out as well where it did seem like that was the method if you wanted to gain traction on this opposition movement do you see people coming out and take the train lost a lot of its novelty effect right now ok because political change takes years in years and years that have to be local this is what happens in political changes with countries that were what they were carrying at one time it takes

a long time to get people involved in the process and that is happening very very strongly there's some people who want to really fast and they don't want to do it through elections they want power because they want power because they believe they deserve it and what about the fact that we're not going to see any presidential elections of course that all led up to being elected a third term this protest and now they're kind of when i down now oh i would say to people i mean if you want to continue to protest fine but you know join a political party there are forty four of them now you have a choice ok get involved see one of the things i saw with a lot of the protesters is that they want someone else to do all the hard work ok they want to go out and wave a flag and say you know give out a slogan we don't want to do the hard nitty gritty work of political change and that's what they need to do. peter has been deceptive in the russian in the global politics in his crosstalk series throughout the past twelve months and r.t. dot com has plenty of editions of the show for you to watch on demand.

iran chooses a new president in june mahmoud ahmadinejad has served his maximum two terms and there is little clue as to who will replace him to tackle the almost inexorable tension with the west over tehran's nuclear program with journalist actually returned see who's often shared his insights on iran with r.t. doesn't expect the new leader to bend to foreign will i think whoever we people of iran elect policy foreign policy terms things are going to be much the same people are already talking about the mayor of tehran at the moment i was in a job himself president ahmadinejad was the mayor of tehran the new mayor of tehran ghalibaf and people are talking about him. perhaps winning in june because it's too early and is notoriously difficult to predict iranian elections as to whether they will be as hardline and again the terms of the terminology of western corporate media on this or bizarre image of the islamic extremist in all sorts of different

morning because the point is iran is there to stay in terms of forging a very different type of developing nation economy because it has all that oil and has all those resources and it's not going to suddenly start changing things the way the i.m.f. or the way washington wants it to be. iran's nuclear plans on a power switch to dominate headlines coming out of the middle east this year online that we've got expert opinion on who the key players in countries are likely to be in shaping how the rest of the region's fortunes will run out from iran to israel to the palestinians all that party don't come. in so a photo finish for twenty twelve we've lined up a gallery of eye catching snapshots of stories that captured worldwide attention in the past.

europeans have a year of fairly uncompromising cuts to contend with which already saw plenty of street protests in the past year or so missing their own debt and unemployment is one thing but investment advisor patrick young says none of it is enough to repair that country which remains the biggest headache. what's happened so far has been so when engine cuts on the masses and we really haven't managed to make the remotest impact upon the whole nation itself greece is still fundamentally in a huge problematic situation those not remotely have a functioning government system that fiscally is going to manage to organize itself in any which way possible to manage to get through the continuing swen cuts that

need to take place of course then we're looking at the whole issue of the demonstrators are the governments listening well the truth is the governments can't afford to listen because what we're seeing within the european union even if the euro has survived miraculously for twelve months government has run out of money the european union's western socialist model of spending huge amounts of money borrowing even greater amounts of money and hoping to pay everything manyara or indeed thirty years from manion or simply does not work well just over two years ago ireland was bankrupt and being bailed out to rescue its failed economy on top of that it's now the country's turn to take on the next six month presidency of the european council as smith reports the celtic tiger has some hard graft ahead of it . it's all changed with new presidency as takes over the

six month rotating challenge on the first of january not be obvious choice islands one of the guys in the countries that have been. and sure enough arlen's the country to take hold in the presidency of the twenty seven nation bloc while being propped up by i.m.f. money so for the next six months the e.u. and systemic problems will be presided over by one of its weakest and most problematic members so what specific challenges does faith in europe over the six months of its presidency. the european economy is slowing flaws and the crisis is nowhere near. secondly it must preside over leaders actually agreeing to an e.u. budget for the years two thousand and fourteen to two thousand and twenty something they've spectacularly failed to do so in fall and thirdly there is a problem coming from right here in london increasing british opposition to

brussels and the threat to european cohesion that uses the irish government expects the e.u. presidency to coast. seven see million. money the country can ill afford and what will it be spent on twenty four million catering accommodation and transport for example and another twenty million extra governments. for the recent conflict in gaza putting israel off planning even more settlements in occupied palestinian territories despite saber rattling from hamas and fatah vying to rearm and defend themselves by all means a middle east reporter. how this might affect the region's future. you look at what's happening on the ground israel continues to announce settlement construction and the palestinians continue to say that for as long as these announcements continue they will be no resumption of peace talks it wasn't so long ago that the palestinians were awarded upgraded status after united nations but you cannot

detract from the fact that we still have palestinian faction groups hamas and fatah who are we same to meet at each other's throats in less than a month the israelis will go to the polls and by all predictions they will reelect the israeli prime minister benjamin netanyahu for another term of office and it doesn't seem as if he has an olive branch so certainly the prognosis for any kind of peace moves is far let's hope that as tough as it will be the two sides will find a way to work together happy new year for a slayer there are more world news for you now this hour at least sixty people including children have been trampled to death stadium in the ivory coast around two hundred more are reported injured the stampede happened there's crowds gathered to watch a new year fireworks show. tens of thousands of people have marched for greater democracy and the resignation of hong kong's top political leader. has faced one in

popularity and a no confidence vote against him since he came to power six months ago he was a victim back to twelve hundred people. well the biggest stories of twenty twelve that didn't make it to the public eye on breaking the set in a few minutes time stay with us. on the march under god these men and women are walking one of the longest uncorrelated loneliest road in the world they reenacting march into exile made by thousands of czarist russia. if i was here three hundred years ago i may have disappointed my local lot i may have deserted from the army or a variety of other crimes the result was the same flight my fellow prisoners around

me i've got a long and very cold walk ahead into exile in siberia yes it took them years to get there summers and winters entire years a lot of people died on the way this group in the western siberian region of alms discovered the living on the only surviving stretch of the original nine thousand kilometers of the siberian exiles track that had no modern changes made to it yevgeny discovered that he's descended from some of these exiles and decided to build a museum telling a story he and his re-enact is now receiving to us from all over the world to show them what it was like what the story is going to stop it's scary to put the shackles on of course but it's interesting if we don't remember our history we will have no future. it's a monument to one of the czarist russia cruelest chapters. the city serves as the capital of anticommunist white russian leader admiral culture shock in the civil war from one thousand nine hundred to nine hundred ninety whilst in residence he

lived here though the study of the man like the maintenance of this building has remained a taboo right up until the present day the. we still received hate mail saying that he hanged a lot of people and was famous for severe punishments it's all true but it was a time of civil war both sides were most recently cruel it is sadly the cruelty which links so much of history to the rest of russia's particularly of exile where they were not a criminal. to live on one hundred thirty three bucks a month for food i should try it because you know how bad the less bad luck i got so. i mean. i know that i've seen really messed up. in the all very sort of personally. worse for the little.

white house superman. radio guy and put him in a. cloak for about fifty years you've never seen anything like this i'm still. going on i imagine martin this is breaking the set so today is army private bradley manning twenty fifth birthday and as of today he spent nine hundred thirty six days in attention in iraq kuwait and now quantico virginia is in prison and has been condemned by the u.n. and countless activists who say his treatment is nothing short of torture bradley manning is accused of providing wiki leaks with hundreds of thousands of diplomatic cables and military documents that shed a light on some of the u.s. government's most horrific of war crimes and even more so.